Category: Food Items (Page 23 of 27)

I really like hot brie, at least what I’ve had at Horatio’s, and I’ve been having a craving for some since my last visit to that restaurant (which I think was on my birthday, in May). I knew that a supermarket product wouldn’t be the same, but I had no idea it could be so inferior. The pastry itself seemed underdone and heavy, while the brie was light and uninteresting. I didn’t even think it was worth it to bring down my very expensive balsamic vinegar to mix with it.
In all, I won’t buy this product again.

I’m not a big pork eater in the first place, but once in a great while I’ll have pork ribs or pork tenderloin. No more. This article by Rolling Stones magazine has convinced me not only that eating pork is unethical, but that it’s also bad for my health. Thanks god my children have only had it a handful of times in their lives.
Here is an excerpt:

Smithfield’s pigs live by the hundreds or thousands in warehouse-like barns, in rows of wall-to-wall pens. Sows are artificially inseminated and fed and delivered of their piglets in cages so small they cannot turn around. Forty fully grown 250-pound male hogs often occupy a pen the size of a tiny apartment. They trample each other to death. There is no sunlight, straw, fresh air or earth. The floors are slatted to allow excrement to fall into a catchment pit under the pens, but many things besides excrement can wind up in the pits: afterbirths, piglets accidentally crushed by their mothers, old batteries, broken bottles of insecticide, antibiotic syringes, stillborn pigs — anything small enough to fit through the foot-wide pipes that drain the pits. The pipes remain closed until enough sewage accumulates in the pits to create good expulsion pressure; then the pipes are opened and everything bursts out into a large holding pond.
The temperature inside hog houses is often hotter than ninety degrees. The air, saturated almost to the point of precipitation with gases from shit and chemicals, can be lethal to the pigs. Enormous exhaust fans run twenty-four hours a day. The ventilation systems function like the ventilators of terminal patients: If they break down for any length of time, pigs start dying.
From Smithfield’s point of view, the problem with this lifestyle is immunological. Taken together, the immobility, poisonous air and terror of confinement badly damage the pigs’ immune systems. They become susceptible to infection, and in such dense quarters microbes or parasites or fungi, once established in one pig, will rush spritelike through the whole population. Accordingly, factory pigs are infused with a huge range of antibiotics and vaccines, and are doused with insecticides. Without these compounds — oxytetracycline, draxxin, ceftiofur, tiamulin — diseases would likely kill them. Thus factory-farm pigs remain in a state of dying until they’re slaughtered. When a pig nearly ready to be slaughtered grows ill, workers sometimes shoot it up with as many drugs as necessary to get it to the slaughterhouse under its own power. As long as the pig remains ambulatory, it can be legally killed and sold as meat.

I wanted a quick and easy dinner last night and this kit from TJ’s seemed to fit the bill. And it would have, had it been good – alas, it wasn’t.
The kit is, in theory, a good idea. All you have to do is microwave a bag of ravioli for 3 minutes, and then the bag of sauce for 1 1/2 minutes. I can’t imagine a quicker meal. And while the sauce was pretty nice, albeit a bit mild, the ravioli itself were quite tasteless. Indeed, if they tasted of anything at all, it was of staleness. That’s too bad because I love mushroom ravioli – the Safeway brand portobello mushroom ravioli are particularly good. Even with the convenience, and despite the fact that the kit is supposed to last you a month in the fridge so it could be there whenever you need it, I can’t see myself buying it again.

Yesterday I made tandoori chicken and brownies. We didn’t eat them at the same time, so I can’t tell you how well they work together, but they were pretty good separately.
The tandoori chicken was bone-in chicken, skinned and marinated for a while on yogur mixed with Parampara Tandoori chicken mix. We then grilled it on the BBQ. Mike thought it was quite good, I was less enthusiastic. I liked the charred parts, but I think the other parts might have had too much marinade. Next time I’ll make sure to wipe some off before grilling. Parampara has a lot of other mixes, which I’ll probably try as well.
The brownies where Trader Joe’s Truffle Brownie Mix. They were also very easy to make (add a lot of butter and eggs) and they were scrumptious. Soooo good, so moist. I’ll definitely not make them again, so I can avoid eating the whole tray.

A friend of a friend recommended this pineapple slicer (which turned out to be the “Vacuvin Pineapple Easy Slicer”) available at Safeway and I wanted to try it. She was kind of embarrased about having bought it – it seemed to her like the type of products they advertise on TV and you pay a fortune for – but she loved it anyway. She was so enthusiastic that I thought it was worth a try. At $10 I was a little hesitant, but we’re pretty bad about eating our pineapples once we buy them. Not any more.
This “easy slicer” is a true wonder. It allows you to easily slice the pineapple into perfect rounds, keep a perfect pineapple shell and easily core it. And with pineapples bred to be sweet, sweet, sweet, the girls love it and we’re eating pineapple galore. OK, the girls are – we don’t get to eat any.
I’m still looking forward to using the shells for some mixed drinks – something tropical and rumy sounds perfect.

Is it just me or do cans of Coke have less gas now? Maybe it is me, but they just seem flatter lately.

A reader writes telling me that Entally sausage “is the best sausage ever to come out of Calcutta, India” and asking me for the recipe. I’ve never even heard of it – but if you have, please e-mail me!

I couldn’t find it in their product list, and I don’t have a picture of it, but Ghirardelli Bittersweet Chocolate Fudge Sauce is just delicious. Dark, intense, creamy, perfect over ice cream or from a spoon. I know it’s available at their factory store in San Leandro. You should certainly try it.
I found Sunny Harvest Blueberry Preserves at the 99cents only store and, after looking at the ingredients and noting the use of sugar and not corn syrup, I just had to try it. They were great. I served them at my last tea party along with a large selection of jams and spreads, and these were the favorite ones (after dulce de leche, of course). They have a very strong and definite blueberry taste. Interestingly, they are made in China, which I’d never pegged as a big producer of blueberries.
I’ve said it before, but I love going to the 99-cents store and seeing what treat I can find for my 99-cents. They are particularly strong on preserves of all kinds, which come from all over the world. I suspect much of it could be sold by European-type stores for many times as much.
What a difference a butter makes. I got some President Unsalted Butter at the EuroMix deli on Piedmont Ave. and I’m in heaven. That butter is just so, so good. I recognize it as being the butter I enjoy at many high-class restaurants (which, I’m sure, don’t churn their own). It also wasn’t particularly expensive given the quality.

Last week I went to London for a meeting, and I got to taste kangaroo. Needless to say, it was the first time. It was served in a salad, and the vinagrette dressing overpowered the flavor of the meat (served medium rare), but it had the look and texture of beef, but a milder flavor, sort of like venison. I’m not sure I’d go out of my way to order it again, but I’m glad I tried it.
Indeed, this is the second exotic meat I’ve tried recently. On my trip to the northwest of Argentina last December I had the opportunity to try llama – both in empanadas and as a steak served with the sauce. I found the meat reminiscent to pork, rather dry and not very flavorful in itself, but good with other condiments or sauces. Again, not something necessarily worth ordering but for the novelty aspect.
Alas, what I did not have in this very brief trip to London was either Indian food or fish & chips. Or anything, really. I had a couple of pasties – self contained bready pies with meat fillings – and they were very good. I imagine they are full of calories, but they do make a cheap and convenient meal. Other than that, I either ate at the conference or at the home of the friends I was staying with. And given the prices of the food in London (and everything else for that matter), I can’t say I feel too bad about that.